Reading is just so central to my mind, to what it means to be human.
Whatever you do when you read fiction is commit a small act of empathy.
You know, you think about situations that.
Are not like your own.
You think about people whose lives are not like your own.
You know, of course, there are ways.
To build empathy and curiosity about the.
World that aren't sitting down and reading a full fledged novel.
But the novel's proven to be a.
Pretty reliable way of building up the.
Brain and building up, you know, the ability to think about a world outside of your own.
So it would be sad if that went away forever.
I just think what a magical time your teenage years are to form those kinds of impressions.
And books have been the reliable way to do that.
So it's like,
it's alarming to me that kids would be cut off from that voluntarily or through some other force.
I can't imagine having lived through adolescence without that as part of my life.
I can't imagine life without having had these different worlds in which I could lose myself and feel
like I was learning all about how human beings work,
how society works, and what's possible to do with words,